Configure

Next, we set up a build directory and configure our compilation. BRL-CAD adhere's to a high conformance standard and considers most warnings as errors, so we turn off that strict behavior just so the build doesn't halt on trivialities.

We could add -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release to get an optimized build or -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug to get one better suited for development work.

Compile

Compilation will usually take anywhere from a couple minutes to an hour depending on your hardware. If you had a quad-core CPU, you might run '"make -j4" to request compiling in parallel.

make
make test

We run make test to see if all went well. If the build fails, it can be helpful to run make again capturing output to a log file. E.g., make > build.log 2>&1

Install

Depending on the version of sources you start with, BRL-CAD should install into /usr/brlcad/SUBDIR where SUBDIR is rel-VERSION or dev-VERSION.

sudo make install
ls -la /usr/brlcad
/usr/brlcad/*/bin/mged

Quick test

You don't have to install, though, and can just run binaries that are in the brlcad/.build/bin directory.

bin/benchmark
bin/mged

That's it! If you have a Release compile, you can submit your benchmark results to benchmark at brlcad dot org. Be sure to check out the extensive Documentation and Main_Page for tutorials and Contributor Quickies for ways to get involved!